Faces on Faith: Man - God's elegant design

June 27, 2013

Have you ever thought of yourself as an idea? Not just a tired, uninspired, limited idea, but an actual elegant design?

It takes a bit of curiosity to make the leap to a metaphysical concept in which we see how we as spiritual ideas fit together in perfect design.

In a recent article in the "Christian Science Sentinel," the editor describes it this way: "God beholds you as His precise and brilliant spiritual expression." While we may see ourselves as weak, ailing, material beings, Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, reveals man as the "harmonious manifestation of an infinite Mind", suggesting that we are as glorious as a symphony, as sparkling as a waterfall, as beautiful as the loveliest sunset.

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June Sieber

Practically every version or translation of the Bible describes man as "the image and likeness of God." Christian Science enlarges on this idea, to suggest that God as Infinite Mind "creates and governs all in perfect harmony, from the mental molecule to infinity."

Realizing that we each have a unique spiritual identity a grand design in which everything works together for good, can lift us beyond aging, afflicted, degenerating concepts of ourselves, to the glorious freedom of freshness and fairness.

Even Deepak Chopra, M.D., in his book "Ageless Body, Timeless Mind," tells us: "The human body, like everything else in the cosmos, is constantly being made anew every second. Although your senses report that you inhabit a solid body in time and space, this is only the most superficial layer of reality."

Christian Science writer Doris Peel described in a poem the wonderful freedom we can have when we embrace ourselves as the Creator's elegant design:

Daily I am His delight,

Daily He rejoices in his handiwork,

All fresh, all bright,

All wrought of elemental light

To be what he beholds as me.

His song sung out in world this day

His theme in play, His act of joy.

Love laughs, and I, Oh it is laughter that I am,

So lark on wing a thing that he,

Daily should thus delight in me.

His theme, his song,

His everlasting act of joy.

Beginning our day with this level of expectation is prayer and enables us to

commune with God. We then can live as Christian Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: "not a cramped, compromised, circumspect life, but one lived in a kind of wild, joyful, full-throated freedom."